PANAMA CITY, Florida (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Saturday he supported the right of Muslims to build a cultural center near the site of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York City but would not comment on the “wisdom” of such a move.

Obama’s comments came after his remarks at a White House event on Friday in which he appeared to offer his backing for the construction of a center called Cordoba House near the site known as “Ground Zero” in lower Manhattan.

Americans in both political parties, including many New Yorkers, object to the project.

Obama’s comments on Friday drew criticism from conservatives and others, and the president sought to clarify them during a trip to Florida on Saturday.

“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there,” Obama told reporters while visiting the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”

On Friday, Obama said he believed Muslims had the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in the country.

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” he said.

WASHINGTON — After skirting the controversy for weeks, President Barack Obama is weighing in forcefully on the mosque near ground zero, saying a nation built on religious freedom must allow it.

“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,” Obama told an intently listening crowd gathered at the White House Friday evening to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” he said. “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.”

The White House had not previously taken a stand on the mosque, which would be part of a $100 million Islamic community center two blocks from where nearly 3,000 people perished when hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Press secretary Robert Gibbs had insisted it was a local matter.

It was already much more than that, sparking debate around the country as top Republicans including Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich announced their opposition. So did the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group.

Obama elevated it to a presidential issue Friday without equivocation.

While insisting that the place where the twin towers once stood was indeed “hallowed ground,” Obama said that the proper way to honor it was to apply American values.

Democrats have been moral idiots for the last forty years. And Barack Obama has stomped his foot all the way down to the floorboard toward moral idiocy.

I watch Fox News regularly. I hear what the Republicans and the conservatives have been saying. I’ve heard what Sarah Palin has said and what Newt Gingrich has said.

None of them are saying that the Muslims who want to build this “community outreach center” don’t have the legal right to build it. What they are saying is that the Muslims shouldn’t build it if they actually want any genuine community “outreach.”

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf claims that this “community center” “will serve as the platform to launch a broader vision of Muslim-West harmony and interdependence.” That clearly isn’t anywhere even remotely true.

This isn’t about freedom of religion, and it isn’t about the Constitution. It’s about right and wrong.

Let me give you an example of what I’m saying. In this country, I have every right to go into a black establishment and repeatedly shout the N-word at the top of my lungs. I have the right to go into a black church wearing a white robe and a white pointy hat. But I shouldn’t do it. And all rights aside, I’m profoundly wrong if I do do it.

On the Democrats’ morally idiotic defense of the mosque, the fact that the Muslims have a right to build it means therefore ergo sum that they should build it, and that anyone who disagrees is “intolerant” or is violating the Constitutional rights of the Muslims.

But that is every bit as stupid as my walking down the street pointing out every single black person and shouting the N-word, and then telling anyone who criticizes me for doing it that they are enemies of the Constitution.

And, of course, the only reason I’m wearing that white robe and that pointy hat is for “community outreach.” You see, I want to create a “racial dialogue.”

So how DARE you criticize me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll put my pointy hood back on and be on my way. I have some black people to go shout at.

And yet Democrats who argue that I should have no right to criticize the inappropriateness of building a mosque celebrating a religion immediately adjacent to a site that was destroyed with huge loss of life in the name of that decision refuse to extend that same principle to their fellow citizens as they repeatedly demonized Tea Party people who were merely exercising their Constitutional rights.

Now, I don’t have to explain this to people who have moral common sense. But if I actually want to create a community, or to create a racial dialogue, I don’t set up a gigantic act of offense to the very people I claim to be reaching out to. There’s something profoundly wrong with this picture.

And building what is essentially a mosque (or are they going to build a synagogue and a church in this “community center” so that Jews and Christians cans worship there, too?) clearly incites rather than heals.

Maybe, instead of building a mosque as close as possible to Ground Zero, this “outreach” could focus on building a synagogue as close as possible to Mecca, instead.

The Reuters article points out that:

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll showed Americans across the political spectrum opposed the project being built near the New York site.

The survey, released on Wednesday, showed nearly 70 percent of Americans opposed it, including 54 percent of Democrats, 82 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of independents.

Seventy percent of Americans don’t feel any “community” from this community center. They feel outraged.

Which is why the next paragraphs that follow that demonstration that the American people are opposed to the construction of this “community center” are true:

U.S. House Republican leader John Boehner called Obama’s “endorsement” of the center’s construction near Ground Zero troubling.

“The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do,” Boehner said in a statement. “This is not an issue of law, whether religious freedom or local zoning. This is a basic issue of respect for a tragic moment in our history.”

Gary Bauer, president of the conservative non-profit group “American Values,” said Obama’s comments showed the president had lost touch with his fellow citizens.

“This latest decision is proof positive that the President does not understand the values and sentiments of the American people, especially while we are still at war around the world with jihadists,” Bauer said in a statement.

The American people understand the difference between the fact that the Muslims who own the property have a right to build, and the fact that it is an outrage for Muslims to build a mosque near the site where a group of Muslims acting in the name of Islam and shouting “Allahu Akbar!” murdered 3,000 innocent Americans in a cowardly attack.

This “outreach center” should not be built near Ground Zero. Build it somewhere else. The American people have been very tolerant regarding the building of more than 3,000 mosques in the United States. The fact that radical Muslim – and their useful idiot liberal apologists – are now arguing that they have the right to build a mosque so close to a scene of Islamic jihadist massacre is a profound demonstration of which side is intolerant. Especially since Islamic countries refuse to allow Christians to build a single church in their countries, let alone 3,000 of them.

And there are questions. So many questions. Who is paying for this “community center”? Can we know for certain that this center is not being funded with radical Islamist money for radical Islamist purposes? No. We don’t get to know.

And what about the man – Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf – who is behind this center? Is the man who refused to even acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization someone we want behind such a huge venture? Do we want the man who said that American policies were an ‘accessory’ to the crime of 9/11, and who said “Osama bin Laden is made in the USA,” to be the American face of Islam as a result of this center?

For that we searched Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf’s own words – in the Arabic and not what he says in English to the western media. It should shock every American to find out that Faisal Abdul Rauf stated to the popular Islamic media Hadiyul-Islam (www.hadielislam.com) on May 26th, 2010 in an article by Sa’da Abdul Maksoud. In it he states that an Islamic state can be established regardless of the government being a kingdom or democracy. In another article titled “I do not believe in religious dialogue” should alarm the ardent skeptic on the mindset of the Islamic visionary who advocates establishing Islamic lobbies throughout the West.

He also admitted that “[In the West] they have separation of church and state, this of course does not exist in any Muslim country. About 99% refuse to separate religion from state and many call for establishing an Islamic Caliphate.”

“Cordoba” refers to the Muslim conquest of Spain. And how is naming this “the Cordoba Initiative” and “the Cordoba House” anything other than Islamic triumphalism, in celebration of the successful 9/11 attack? Add to that the historic Muslim tradition of building a mosque on top of every place of victory (i.e., 9/11 as a victory for Islam and a defeat for Christendom), and we’ve got a problem.

There are good Muslim leaders out there. Faisal Abdul Rauf is not one of them.

Barack Obama is a fool. And nearly 70% of the American people understand that as regards to this issue. Obama is as fundamentally twisted about this issue as he was about Gitmo when he demonized it and idiotically promised he would close it no later than January 2010. He is a moral idiot and a moral weakling. He is a disgrace to this country. And until he day he is gone, we are living in “God damn America.”